Article III standing is supposed to shut the courthouse doors to ideologically motivated plaintiffs with no personal stake in their litigation and open its doors to good-faith plaintiffs with a real risk of future injury-but the doctrine sometimes does the opposite. That malfunction is due to three inconsistencies in standing's imminent injury requirement: (1) courts make erratic evidentiary demands of plaintiffs alleging future injury; (2) courts unpredictably characterize the chain of inferences between the defendant's conduct and the plaintiff 's future injury; and (3) circuits are split about when future injury to an association's members confers standing to the association itself. This Comment argues that two minimally invasive doctrinal changes will promote consistency: (A) rigorously adhering to the requirement that the plaintiff 's evidentiary burden depends on the stage of litigation and (B) making the chain of inferences end at risk of harm rather than materialized harm. Together, these changes achieve an equilibrium, ensuring that the floodgates of litigation are neither flung open nor closed completely. These changes honor standing's separation-of-powers purpose and empower the courts to be guardians of justice.
The United States often styles itself a haven for the freedom of religion and equal justice. In spite of these lofty ideals, U.S. courts often apply the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment unevenly, protecting Old World religions but not Native American religions in the context of sacred sites. These issues recently took center stage in Apache Stronghold v. United States, but the case law shaping these unequal outcomes dates back over thirty years to Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association. Scholars roundly criticize Lyng and the divergent outcomes it produces between Indigenous religions and others. Recent threats to Indigenous religious autonomy demand a new approach. This Comment proposes a modified analysis for free exercise claims by applying the emergent Equal Liberty Approach. This approach modifies the existing "substantial burden" test to account for equality-based outcomes. This Comment will reanalyze how this approach would affect the sacred sites cases since Lyng, all while holding space for the deleterious costs exacted by the existing sacred sites case law.
This Comment confronts the mounting challenges of antitrust jurisprudence. Modern courts struggle to enforce the Sherman Act-an 1890 statute increasingly strained by the realities of contemporary markets. These difficulties are compounded by a shifting regulatory landscape: a Trump administration that champions free-market ideals, legislation aimed at curbing corporate dominance, and a judiciary tasked with navigating over a century of conflicting precedents. Such tensions threaten the Act's original purpose to restrain corporate power. Focusing on Section 1 of the Act, which seemingly places a categorical ban on "every contract" in restraint of trade, this Comment analyzes the ongoing friction between the rigid per se (bright-line) rule and the discretionary rule of reason. It argues that the judiciary's retreat from bright-line rules risks emboldening corporate actors and undermining the democratic commitments of antitrust law. This Comment makes two key contributions. First, it reconstructs the per se doctrine through the lens of Section 1's treatment of joint ventures-arrangements that sit between multiparty agreements and single entities-which typifies the growing complexity of corporate organization. Recognizing antitrust as a body of judge-made law, this Comment reimagines the per se doctrine by tracing a throughline across a century of seemingly inconsistent Supreme Court precedent. This reconstruction offers a modernized vision of the per se doctrine: one that remains faithful to Section 1's democratic aims while aligning with today's market structures. Contrary to judicial skepticism, this Comment shows that the per se doctrine can coexist with the modern economy. Second, this Comment defends bright-line rules as essential to preserving consistency and curbing judicial overreach. By restoring the per se doctrine's legitimacy, this Comment argues that bright-line enforcement remains critical to checking corporate power and safeguarding the foundational promises of antitrust law.
Attention to the trial of Luigi Mangione has renewed debate about nullification-the jury's inviolate power to acquit a defendant contrary to the evidence presented. Jury nullification proponents hold that it is a mechanism of last resort for refusing to apply laws that conflict with the public conscience. Opponents, by contrast, argue that nullification undermines the law by diminishing its legitimacy. To prosecutors and defense attorneys, however, these arguments are immaterial: Jury nullification is part of the institutional landscape of the contemporary jury trial and thus must be treated as a potentiality-a feature of the agnostic, strategic, and ethical terrain of legal practice. The critical empirical question, largely overlooked by scholars, is how the possibility of jury nullification affects legal practice and whether that effect is desirable. This Article addresses that issue. It proceeds in three Parts. The first Part reviews the contested place of jury nullification in the legal system. The second Part draws on original data collected via participant observation and interviews with federal and state prosecutors and defense attorneys to show that the relative strategic significance of jury nullification depends on the type of case, community demographics, and sociocultural contexts. Among attorneys, perceived nullification risk can prompt sustained and critical reflection on community values at different phases of case preparation, including charging decisions and plea discussions. Contemporary legal practice, I argue, is deeply responsive to the specter of jury nullification. Building on these findings, the third Part contends that the predominant judicial approach to jury nullification-that is, discouragement with emphasis on the duty to follow the law-reflects its perceived deleterious effects and not its actual effects on legal practice. The possibility of nullification imprints the trial in a way that forces legal actors to think about the relationship between laws and local mores-a process that enhances the dynamic and democratic character of our legal system by opening laws themselves to questing . In the wake of McElrath v. Georgia, a 2024 Supreme Court decision that reaffirmed the finality of not-guilty verdicts, I argue that certain common anti-nullification judicial practices are unconstitutional. As an alternative, courts should develop a standard instruction for every trial that affirms that the jury's right to acquit is protected and cannot lead to the sanctioning of the jury. Although jury nullification might loom large as a spectral presence in the contemporary court, it has salutary effects even in this form that should be protected and enhanced.
In recent years, the Supreme Court of the United States has expressed profound skepticism of congressional action that risks intruding upon the operation of state governments. Simultaneously, the Court has taken a dim view of federal efforts to protect the right to vote. This Comment argues that both doctrinal shifts are in tension with the Constitution's requirement that the federal government guarantee a "Republican Form of Government" to every state in the Union. Since 1849, the Supreme Court has held that the Republican Guarantee Clause is enforceable only by Congress. Congress invoked the clause to enact a program of sweeping political reform in the American South during Reconstruction. Led by Senator Charles Sumner, Congress mandated new state constitutions and amended state suffrage laws on that authority. Presented with the opportunity to invalidate these efforts, the Supreme Court declined to reach the question. In the more than one hundred years since, the Court has continued to recognize congressional primacy regarding the Republican Guarantee Clause. This Comment argues that Congress has more power to act with respect to state government structure than it or the Court currently recognizes. The clause's historic concern with voting rights, in particular, makes it an underutilized source of constitutional authority for congressional protection of the right to vote.
